Mary Poppins - on Broadway!
New York Daily News - Howard Kissel review
She'll always sound precocious
Monday, November 13th, 2006
Although it's no longer true that the sun never sets on the British Empire, there is a part of that empire that never lost its place in the sun.
That is the extraordinary world of British children's literature - the novels of Charles Dickens with their forlorn waifs making their way through the world, the stories by an Oxford math teacher about a girl who falls down a rabbit hole, the tale of a boy who refuses to grow up, and a series about a wunderkind wizard with a lightning-bolt scar.
One of these characters who defy the laws of gravity has just taken up residence on Broadway, doubtless for a long time to come: Mary Poppins.
The new musical, opening Thursday at the New Amsterdam Theater, is the first project co-produced by the Disney Corporation and theater legend Cameron Mackintosh. It has been directed by Richard Eyre, better known for his productions of classics for Britain's Royal National Theater. The sets and costumes are by Bob Crowley, who has designed the grand Edwardian household of the Banks family so that it moves backward and forward, up and down, as if a camera were swooping in and out of closeup.
Choreographer Matthew Bourne has created rollicking dances to familiar songs by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman like "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the beloved 1964 Disney film. And there are new songs by the British team of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.
The book for the musical is by Julian Fellowes, who won an Oscar for writing Robert Altman's 2001 film "Gosford Park." Fellowes hasn't just dropped in on the Poppins world: An aunt read him the magical nanny's book series as a child in England in the early 1950s.
"I didn't have to find a relationship with Mary," Fellowes says. "I've always had one. Every successful children's story has something that resonates, that touches everybody. Mary Poppins is like the angel who suddenly appears in a Bible story. She arrives in the middle of your troubled life to set things right."
In fact, "Mary Poppins" first arrived in 1934, the creation of Australian-born writer P. L. Travers (born Helen Lyndon Goff, the pen name was a device to disguise her gender).
Throughout the Poppins books, Travers maintains the sense of mystery about the nanny who arrives on the wind from no-one-knows-where to take care of two London children who are taught, and bewildered, by her.
The original novel was set in the Depression; Disney set the story in the Edwardian era, and so the musical follows suit. And contrary to people's memory of the character, Mary is not all sugar and spice. Ashley Brown's Broadway incarnation is true to that.
"One of my favorite moments in the book is when Mary does for once express emotion," says Fellowes. "Michael, the boy she looks after, wants her back to being [his] sharp-tongued nanny.
"She represents the Rules. In a time when there don't seem to be any, you feel good and safe in her company."
Travers, however, did not consider herself a children's book writer ("I've always been a very anonymous writer," she once said. "I wanted the name of the book put forth, not mine"). And she was fiercely protective of her best-known creation. It took Walt Disney several years to win her approval for the film. Similarly, Mackintosh had to court her before she consented to a stage version, a few years before she died at age 97 in 1996.
Like her creation, Travers had a no-nonsense view of childhood. "Children should have a storyteller or a singer to put them to bed," she once told an interviewer. "It makes bedtime a ritual. It's also a comfort. You can see the end of things when you're grown up, whereas a child sees no end to its misery."
She'll always sound precocious
Monday, November 13th, 2006
Although it's no longer true that the sun never sets on the British Empire, there is a part of that empire that never lost its place in the sun.
That is the extraordinary world of British children's literature - the novels of Charles Dickens with their forlorn waifs making their way through the world, the stories by an Oxford math teacher about a girl who falls down a rabbit hole, the tale of a boy who refuses to grow up, and a series about a wunderkind wizard with a lightning-bolt scar.
One of these characters who defy the laws of gravity has just taken up residence on Broadway, doubtless for a long time to come: Mary Poppins.
The new musical, opening Thursday at the New Amsterdam Theater, is the first project co-produced by the Disney Corporation and theater legend Cameron Mackintosh. It has been directed by Richard Eyre, better known for his productions of classics for Britain's Royal National Theater. The sets and costumes are by Bob Crowley, who has designed the grand Edwardian household of the Banks family so that it moves backward and forward, up and down, as if a camera were swooping in and out of closeup.
Choreographer Matthew Bourne has created rollicking dances to familiar songs by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman like "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the beloved 1964 Disney film. And there are new songs by the British team of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.
The book for the musical is by Julian Fellowes, who won an Oscar for writing Robert Altman's 2001 film "Gosford Park." Fellowes hasn't just dropped in on the Poppins world: An aunt read him the magical nanny's book series as a child in England in the early 1950s.
"I didn't have to find a relationship with Mary," Fellowes says. "I've always had one. Every successful children's story has something that resonates, that touches everybody. Mary Poppins is like the angel who suddenly appears in a Bible story. She arrives in the middle of your troubled life to set things right."
In fact, "Mary Poppins" first arrived in 1934, the creation of Australian-born writer P. L. Travers (born Helen Lyndon Goff, the pen name was a device to disguise her gender).
Throughout the Poppins books, Travers maintains the sense of mystery about the nanny who arrives on the wind from no-one-knows-where to take care of two London children who are taught, and bewildered, by her.
The original novel was set in the Depression; Disney set the story in the Edwardian era, and so the musical follows suit. And contrary to people's memory of the character, Mary is not all sugar and spice. Ashley Brown's Broadway incarnation is true to that.
"One of my favorite moments in the book is when Mary does for once express emotion," says Fellowes. "Michael, the boy she looks after, wants her back to being [his] sharp-tongued nanny.
"She represents the Rules. In a time when there don't seem to be any, you feel good and safe in her company."
Travers, however, did not consider herself a children's book writer ("I've always been a very anonymous writer," she once said. "I wanted the name of the book put forth, not mine"). And she was fiercely protective of her best-known creation. It took Walt Disney several years to win her approval for the film. Similarly, Mackintosh had to court her before she consented to a stage version, a few years before she died at age 97 in 1996.
Like her creation, Travers had a no-nonsense view of childhood. "Children should have a storyteller or a singer to put them to bed," she once told an interviewer. "It makes bedtime a ritual. It's also a comfort. You can see the end of things when you're grown up, whereas a child sees no end to its misery."